I'm Looking at you Through the Lights
- Jul 12, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 16, 2023
It's 75 and sunny in Seattle, WA. I'm looking out the front door at the white house across the street. The only thing I know about this white house is that the owner works for Starbucks, how plainly Seattle of her.
I've been incessantly trying to make out a meaning for my existence here in Seattle -- I revised this notion again after a month-long trip back to Austin. I didn't come back to Washington with any more gratitude or appreciation for this town but I did come back and let my past go (again). Austin will always be there, I've said goodbye (for the third time), heading "home" to somewhere else -- and this home feels strangely more familiar than Austin these days. One thing about me... I'm slow. Slow to arrive, slow to understand, slow to accept the reality of a situation. But when I finally arrive, finally draw a line in my life and decide to live by the shape of that proverbial sound, it becomes the new way I behave. And so, it's no surprise that the answer doesn't come on a jet plane or even speeding down the highway at 90 miles an hour to me. No, it comes written by quill, sealed and hand-delivered, piece by piece over 8 months, and all I have to show of this is that I don't have a meaning for Seattle; It just is.
"I draw a line in my life Singing this is the new way I behave now And actually live by the shape of that sound
Circle in the back of my throat Spinning in my head and on my pillow
Telling you things you don't need to know Letting you know I trust you so much Then I'm looking at you through the lights"
I think it's important to take account of our whereabouts, our lessons, and our influences alike. Ensuring that we live by the things we've learned and integrate them in a way so that history doesn't repeat itself (but like also being so so open to new ways of being -- expansion ya know?). My hair has grown long and so too have the moments that I've reflected upon how I "behave". I've suggested to myself new ways of behaving over the last 8 months in an era I've termed "Seattle Season". The most transcendent thought of these tireless mental meanderings is trust. How do I show trust, how do I embody trust, how do I relearn what it means to trust? All really beautiful questions. I'd like to assure a younger version of myself that life will slowly reveal this but that it won't come in a language she's understood.
Two weeks ago Lara advised me (again), to "come out of my head, come into my heart" and it sounded to me just like the first time she suggested it nearly 3 years ago.
"If I (brain) can figure it out then I don't need to involve the delicate heart", is what I imagine my ego says when it exhausts every synapse in my brain trying not to burden the heart. Sending out signals to search for answers from within my deeply held schemas -- how cute. I witness myself. It's lovely to see my inner systems working together to find answers and protect each other -- though sometimes misguided (ego, brain). It's funny to me how the things we work on, to some degree, will always be the things we work on. Like a merry-go-round I spin around for ages subconsciously intellectualizing scenarios in an effort to avoid feeling whatever IT is; It's the way I have always behaved. As a witness to these frameworks, I softly suggest new directions -- Lara always seems to know a better direction in which I can begin to explore and I trust her (I trust her?).
In this one act of trust for Lara, I reframe trust. Perhaps, I've redefined it in some small way. And as it takes a new shape I release the references to some old version of that word... It's not like my previously held definition of trust was something worth holding on to anyway (lol). Lara has taught me time and time again how to trust myself, she's stood witness to conversations and exercises of self-trust. I've learned to trust the adult version of myself who gently cares for all parts of me. It's a resoundingly positive foundation for this new era of developing trust in my external environments too. Yet, like most things, this feels much safer inside the bounds of safety.
What I've observed of myself is that I've never been able to just trust. Over the course of dating it's been suggested to me that trust should be given until proven untrustworthy. It's ~aN~ approach... and an idea that I've sat with many times wondering why that cannot be so for me. To those who are able to trust until given a reason not to, god damn I hope trauma never finds and I'm sincerely jealous. But then, this is the beauty of the human experience and all of our psychosocial factors.
As I read through my lifespan development book I connect the dots to events in my life that have weakened my ability to trust. Trust in this matter is defined as the ways that my culture sees "normal". I see two options, adjust my mental schemas to allow trust in my current culture or get a new culture (in reality, there are probably at least 3-4 more ways to handle this but for the sake of making a point stay with me). Both options require something of me, and despite popular belief, neither is an easier approach. It could be argued that changing a schema isn't within my control, but perhaps by proximity of development, I could align myself with people who have this skill to ensure the development of it inside myself. By contrast, I could align myself with a community that feels like a safer more at-home space for my nervous system (things don't always need to be so damn hard). Either way, I'd be drawing a line in my life as quoted from Rings by Pinegrove (a very Seattle song for me). And so this brings me full circle to the hopes I've dispatched for connection, luck, and change.
Melanie Reed... a poet. A happenstance in Greenlake -- I picked my words and you wrote my lines. Next thing I see, is me, telling you all the things that you don't need to know.
"Where is home in this fresh poetry reflection? Where can I finally start to be, without the losing and the endless introspection? I am feeling out this blue horizon, how to finally direct the energy, and I am changing slowly, seeking, wondering about these dislocations, listening to these green notes behind the screen, the lucky 7 sequence blurs and looms, and maybe somethings finally starting to become clean."
Seattle isn't my home and so still I search for what else this world might show me, where can I finally be? The funny thing about "finding" home is that it's not something you even find. It's built through moments, connections, and correlations. Home finds you more often than you find it. Though my front door stands physically open I find the door to my heart to not be as open as it once was (that's okay). I dream of a day when the door to my heart will stand more open again. I'm not ashamed of the whispers about my boundaries -- however prude to the matter of trust that might make me. I'm more interested in a culture that resonates with me.
I release the words that have circled in the back of my throat and the internalized thoughts that spin in my head on my pillow. A Mandee full of soft, sweet, loving trust... I'm looking at you through these blinding lights of a very bright future. I'm looking at you as the beautiful sun sets, another night behind the mountains in Seattle. I send out a call to the place that is calling me too, for the day that our energetic bodies will stand before each other and it will wash away the dissonance of the lessons before.
Inchoately trusting,
Mandeebeth
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